WAVEFUNCTION WEIRDNESS
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Quantum physics governs the laws of the fundamental particles, atoms and molecules of our Universe. The mathmatics have been applied to explain counter-intuitive phenomena. For example, not only can a particles be in two places at once, it can be two things at once–and if they are far apart they can even communicate with each other at a speed faster than light. Read about the nature of the wavefunction, the mysterious entity that lies at the heart of quantum weirdness. These strange Wave-Particles may even hold answers to the Sasquatch Phenomena.
From a practical perspective, its nature does not matter. The textbook Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, developed in the 1920s mainly by physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, treats the wavefunction as nothing more than a tool for predicting the results of observations, and cautions physicists not to concern themselves with what reality looks like underneath. “You can’t blame most physicists for following this ‘shut up and calculate’ ethos because it has led to tremendous developments in nuclear physics, atomic physics, solid-state physics and particle physics,” says Jean Bricmont, a statistical physicist at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. “So people say, let’s not worry about the big questions.”
But some physicists worried anyway. By the 1930s, Albert Einstein had rejected the Copenhagen interpretation — not least because it allowed two particles to entangle their wavefunctions, producing a situation in which measurements on one could instantaneously determine the state of the other even if the particles were separated by vast distances. Rather than accept such “spooky action at a distance”, Einstein preferred to believe that the particles’ wavefunctions were incomplete. Perhaps, he suggested, the particles have some kind of ‘hidden variables’ that determine the outcome of the measurement, but that quantum theories do not capture.
Experiments since then have shown that this spooky action at a distance is quite real, which rules out the particular version of hidden variables that Einstein advocated. But that has not stopped other physicists from coming up with interpretations of their own. These interpretations fall into two broad camps. There are those that agree with Einstein that the wavefunction represents our ignorance — what philosophers call psi-epistemic models. And there are those that view the wavefunction as a real entity — psi-ontic models.
To appreciate the difference, consider a thought experiment that Schrödinger described in a 1935 letter to Einstein. Imagine that a cat is enclosed in a steel box. And imagine that the box also contains a sample of radioactive material that has a 50% probability of emitting a decay product in one hour, along with an apparatus that will poison the cat if it detects such a decay. Because radioactive decay is a quantum event, wrote Schrödinger, the rules of quantum theory state that, at the end of the hour, the wavefunction for the box’s interior must be an equal mixture of live cat and dead cat.
Ron Morehead has been investigating the Bigfoot phenomena for over 4 decades and has come to believe the answers may lay in the further understanding of Quantum Physics. Because wither the cat is alive or dead depends on the observer, this demonstrates how the viewing of any object including Sasquatch is truly dependent on the person whose viewing it.
SRC: www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585